Gareth Cook first became aware of the singular power of a good infographic back when he was working as a science reporter for The Boston Globe in the early aughts. “I realized that in some cases, no matter what I did with words, I absolutely could not explain some things without visual help,” he says. “You can have many, many words and not get across what you can get across in an instant with an infographic.” He’s been fascinated with the things since. Recently, he got the chance to look at a good many of them.

Last year, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist was tapped to edit the first volume of The Best American Infographics, a job that involved poring over hundreds of examples to come up with the 60-some pieces that ended up in the book. Along the way he established a brain trust of designers, editors, artists and data experts to help him collect good examples of the craft, but he alone made the final call for what made it in the book, and that involved tackling one very tough question: Cook had to figure out what, exactly, the word “infographic” really means today.

Cook had to figure out what, exactly, the word ‘infographic’ means.

“It was very clear to me at first that there’s an orthodox view of what an infographic is,” he explains. There are certain rigorous approaches to clarity and efficiency that have emerged as best practices for data visualizations–all encapsulated by what you could call “the Tufte approach,” Cook says, referring to the influential data-viz master Edward Tufte, who advocated information density and highly distilled functionality. Still, Cook resisted that narrow view in making his selections. “I thought it would be a mistake to hew to that definition,” he explains. “It’s such a diverse and interesting medium, I felt like it would be a far less interesting collection–less satisfying for readers and less intellectually engaging–if we did only that one type of infographic.” Ultimately, Cook found that the stuff popping up around the fringes of the burgeoning field was often the most interesting.

The book showcases plenty of orthodox work but includes a good deal of not-exactly-orthodox work, too. There are a full dozen pieces from the New York Times, where a team of incredibly talented designers have been putting out top-notch (and Tufte-approved) work reliably over the last several years. There are other polished, prime-time pieces from pubs like National Geographic and the Guardian. But there are also decidedly more idiosyncratic works, like Tom Scocca’s hand-drawn chart ranking past Super Bowl halftime shows on Alfred Kinsey’s heterosexual-homosexual rating scale, and Evan Roth’s fantastic Multi-Touch Paintings, in which the artist documents today’s ubiquitous smartphone gestures by swiping to unlock and playing Angry Birds with inky thumbs. Ultimately, the list of contributors includes not just the types of data journalists Cook once worked with in the newsroom, but a diverse cast of artists, statisticians, developers, and more.

“I tried really hard to give a sense of all the approaches people are taking with infographics, and the raw creativity that’s out there,” Cook says. “I know for a fact that there are entries in here that someone who is maybe more orthodox in their views are not going to care for, or thinks could be better in some way.” Still, he’s pleased with the inclusiveness of the collection. And recognizing that much of today’s best data viz work doesn’t remain static on our screens, Cook got Eric Rodenbeck, founder of Stamen Design, to pick 10 interactive pieces for the book. They include Bear 71, an astonishing hybrid documentary by the National Film Board of Canada and an eye-opening video clip that illustrates New York City’s carbon emissions as a stream of huge, bouncing CG spheres.

‘I tried to give a sense of the raw creativity out there.’

So what do all these infographics have in common? What, ultimately, qualified a piece for the designation of one of the year’s best?Cook spells out some criteria in the introduction: intellectual power, aesthetic sophistication, and emotional impact. But another thing Cook looked for was a sense that the pieces understood the questions they were trying to answer, and took a form that helped readers find those answers. Sometimes those questions are simple. Gustavo Viera Dias’s “How To Be Happy” flow chart gets its point across succinctly: If you’re not happy with your life, make a change. “In other cases, the questions are going to be more complex and the reader might have to do more work,” Cook says. Many of the Times‘ visualizations, for example, come with a bit of a learning curve but ultimately reward the reader’s patience with rich insight. “But if you haven’t worked hard to anticipate those questions and make your infographic effective, then [readers are] doing unnecessary work, and that’s when I think you start to get into some problems,” Cook says.

When we talked, Cook was already busy amassing work for next year’s edition. One piece had him stymied–it was a wooden cabinet whose irregular shelves had been formed by data related to local snowmelt. On one hand, the project is an unambiguous attempt to make data visual, but Cook admitted that the idea of a physical, three-dimensional object as an “infographic” might be a stretch. For now it’s in the maybe pile. Still, don’t expect next year’s collection to retreat to orthodoxy. In addition to all the other criteria, next year’s batch will be susceptible to the same gut check that brought about some of this year’s most interesting picks. “Sometimes I included something just because I hadn’t seen anything like it, and it had this unique integrity to it,” Cook says. “You had this sense that something cool was happening there.”